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This could be the tipping point
By Sylvia Borren, Ruud Lubbers and Sayida Vanenburg |
December 21, 2009, Monday
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THE climate issue can only be solved on the basis of shared, deeply felt ethical principles.
Humanity has reached a critical moment in Earth's history, at which peoples and nations will have to recognize their solidarity - with each other and with the Earth - and start acting upon it.
Similar to the way world leaders adopted the United Nations Millennium Declaration in September 2000, and embraced the resulting Millennium Development Goals, today's climate negotiators will have to commit themselves to creating a basis of shared fundamental ethical principles.
Such a basis is not hard to find. Its inspiration can be the Earth Charter, which, launched in 2000, was initiated by, among others, former USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev and Wangari Mathaai, who received the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts in the Green Belt Movement, a pan-African tree-planting initiative.
The climate problem does not stop at borders. In the next few decades, a low-lying country like the Netherlands will need to invest billions of euros to intensify its age-old struggle against rising water.
But in many other countries, the water is already flooding over the dikes, both literally and figuratively.
Climate change affects particularly those countries that lack the money needed to take adequate measures against rising sea levels, persistent droughts, or devastating storms, even though they had nothing to do with the primary cause of these problems - industrialization in the developed countries.
Apart from the necessary, often infrastructural adaptations to survive the effects of climate change, enormous efforts to prevent even worse things from happening are required.
Large investments in forestation, agriculture, and energy supply are called for.
Women's role
In devising solutions, the role of women should be a major focus. Women are often the first people who have to address the problem of gaining access to natural resources, and they are capable of playing a major role as pioneers in finding solutions to climate change.
In the short term, the world should become a sustainable global society of low-CO2 emitters. This is a mission for all humankind, in which thinking in terms of power blocs has no place.
The pursuit of a sustainable global society of low-CO2 emitters requires a tremendous effort. For this reason, it also requires a broadly shared ethical basis.
This would guide the negotiating parties in such a way that they look not only for solutions to a part of the problem, but first and foremost at a comprehensive solution to the entire problem.
That's not only a scientific necessity; it is an ethical imperative.
(Sylvia Borren is former executive director of Oxfam Novib. Ruud Lubbers is former prime minister of the Netherlands. Sayida Vanenburg is former Netherlands youth representative to the UN Commission on Sustainable Development. The views are their own. Shanghai Daily condensed the article. Copyright: Project Syndicate/Institute for Human Sciences, 2009. www.project-syndicate.org)
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